September 2, 2012

WE TOOK THE SCENIC TOUTE TODAY through the Big Horn Mountains to get to Cody, Wyoming. Everywhere we have ever traveled, I have always opted for the scenic route, particularly when we have been in the mountains. To this day, our daughters still speak in reverential tones about our drive through the Alps from Innsbruck, Austria to Bolzano, Italy. Eschewing more traditional routes, I chose a very narrow, twisting road down to Italy. Our ride was made even more interesting by the proximity of our wheels to the edge of the cliff, the absence of guardrails and the continuous blind turns.

Our drive today was not nearly as dangerous as that long ago trip to Italy. The Big Horn Mountains are not the Alps, but neither are they the Indiana Dunes. Deceptively high at points, with one peak over 13,000 feet, they offer a variety of jaw-dropping views. Jim Bridger and Jed Smith often trapped in these mountains, and later led other parties through them, but those guys probably stuck to the valleys and rivers several thousand feet below us.

When we emerged from the mountains, we had lunch in a café in a very small town, the type of eating place where the men exiting usually have toothpicks in their mouths while emitting discrete belches. Carole got not only the small-town stare, but a full 180 degree “turn around and look stare.” I think it was because of the pink King Ropes hat she proudly wore.

We arrived in Cody early enough to visit the huge museum dedicated to Buffalo Bill. Because of his propensity to embellish, or outright fabricate, different periods of his life, there are some who refer to him as "Buffalo Bull.”  He was one of the founders of the town; thus, the museum sugar coats Bill’s life. The only mention of his boozing and womanizing was a small, nearly hidden, placard with a quote from his wife about their divorce: “He gave me some money when he hadn’t drunk up all of his money.” A couple of placards gently hinted at his questionable stint as a pony express rider and his equally questionable duel with an Indian; but the man depicted in the museum was the familiar grade school storybook heroic figure as opposed to the revisionist Buffalo Bill portrayed by Paul Newman in the Robert Altman film. Actually, there was no need for Buffalo Bill to conjure up stories; there were enough verifiable incidents in his life for him to be called a legitimate hero. His actions as the chief scout for Phil Sheridan during the Indian Wars, for example, led to the Medal of Honor.

Cody will probably be best remembered for his Wild West shows. Realizing that people in the East would be more than happy to shell out some money to see real cowboys and Indians, he put together a show featuring real Indians and real cowboys. After the end of the Indian Wars at Wounded Knee, there were plenty of Indians who preferred to hire out for hokey reenactments of attacks on Whites to sitting around on a reservation. He even convinced Sitting Bull to sit and look stern during the shows. Sharpshooters, such as the  famous Annie Oakley, and expert riders rounded out the early shows. Over time, through the addition of elephants, Cossacks, Zouaves, Prussian soldiers, Africans and Arabs, the shows morphed into productions far more than mere Wild West shows.

Cody took his shows all over the country and to most of the major cities in Europe. In addition to the obvious big city venues, he did shows in small towns like my home town of Streator, Illinois. When I was a kid, there was a hitching post located about a hundred yards from our house. There was clearly no need for hitching posts at the time, but it was accepted as gospel that Buffalo Bill Cody had once hitched his horse to that post. As the story went, he had come to a barn once located near the post to buy hay for the animals in his show. By the time I was in high school, I had concluded that the story was apocryphal. By that time, I had seen film clips of some of his shows, and they were invariably in big cities.  Why would he bring his show to a small town? A few years ago, I found a newspaper clipping from 1893 at the local historical society in Streator announcing an upcoming appearance of the show in my hometown.  I have now adopted Winston Churchill's solution to the hitching post story. In one of the volumes of his History of the English Speaking Peoples, Churchill recounts a legend about Richard the Lion Hearted. He admitted that he did not know if the story was true, but concluded: “If it didn’t happen that way, it should have.” Sadly, the hitching post is now gone. Some new property owner probably saw it and said: “ A hitching post in this day and age, I am going to rip that useless thing out of here.”

There was one other attraction in town, but we passed it up. Jerimiah Johnson, the old trapper portrayed by Robert Redford, in the film of the same name, is buried just outside of town. Despite the poor casting of Redford as Johnson and the omission of the actions which made Johnson famous, the film provides some idea of how tough it was for the early trappers. Because the real Johnson ate the livers of the many Crow Indians he killed, he was nick-named “Liver Eating” Johnson. It certainly would have added some verisimilitude to the film if Redford had gobbled down a liver or two. Also, Redford looked nothing like the real Johnson. The only known photo of old “Liver” suggests a partially deranged man.